


Nightingale

by LitsyKalyptica



Category: Bee Gees - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Self-Indulgent Melodrama, victorian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26309434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LitsyKalyptica/pseuds/LitsyKalyptica
Summary: What is real and what is the mad imaginings of a boy eternally plagued, bedridden more often than not, start to melt together into a hazy soup. You couldn’t see the bottom of the pot even if you stuck your head in. I grew up with the belief that my lungs could not afford to be filled with dreams.That was, until she arrived.
Relationships: Robin/Lily
Comments: 8
Kudos: 4





	1. Memories of Music

**Author's Note:**

> Say hello to the first Bee Gees fic on AO3.  
> And it's a self-indulgent melodramatic Victorian AU.

The piano in my father’s study was once well-used. I have some distant and almost dreamlike memory of sitting beside him on the bench as his fingers masterfully danced along the keys; of watching in awe at how delicately his infamously firm hands coaxed the instrument to his will; and listening with rapt splendor at the melodies that flowed from the great beast’s belly. I was young enough then to believe it was a force of magic, not bars striking a carefully calculated series of strings. I’d soon learn better. It wouldn’t abhor me to the instrument, or to the music it produced, but I do not remember sitting and listening to him play without that fantasy attached. But then, I’m not sure this happened at all.

What is real and what is the mad imaginings of a boy eternally plagued, bedridden more often than not, start to melt together into a hazy soup. You couldn’t see the bottom of the pot even if you stuck your head in. I grew up with the belief that my lungs could not afford to be filled with dreams.

That was, until she arrived.

Regardless, Father had not played in many years. It wouldn’t be possible for him to sneak away and play in secret; he couldn’t hide it from me. While he is away from dawn to dusk with business, I am asleep under the watchful eye of Ms. Wills, and while he is at home I am awake, because Ms. Wills, too, has gone home. When I am well, I stay awake through the night in my library. A roll of down pillows, though quite a bit heftier than myself, make a sound replacement, in case Mother comes by to ensure I am resting. She doesn’t dare get too close. And, although they don’t believe I do, or wouldn’t if I told them, I do hear all goings on in the house. The walls are thinner than you’d expect –even thinner if you knew how to identify the weak spots— and sound travels a great distance in the empty corridors. If I listen for it, I can hear the stable boy tending the horse, and at the same time my mother and father in the parlor, discussing what they ought to do about me. I tended not to listen to such conversations, as too often they’d left me in such a fit I’d be ill for days after. But if I wanted to, I could. I would certainly listen out for any beautiful melodies in a house so tragically devoid of the blessing of music.

The last fortnight of winter –as I had indeed not been well at all— I could only lie in bed and listen for it, waiting on stolen breath in hopes sweet melodies will stir the stale air of the old house and soothe my heart. On my luckiest nights, I would be awake to hear them, and one night even I was gifted with the tonic of a lullaby. I had never heard these tunes before, though I recognized the uneasy G key instantly as father’s piano; and he being away, it certainly wasn’t my father who was playing.

Winter for Barry and Maurice meant an extended holiday to the Alps to ski with some schoolmates of theirs; for me, their invalid brother, it meant longer spells of wracking coughs and fever than other months. And it would be in keeping with my misfortune that this winter proved to be particularly unwavering in its cruelty. I didn’t leave my bed for four weeks without respite. Ms. Wills sat reading at my bedside, and no matter how I pleaded that she read aloud so I might have some cure for the monotony of my illness if not for the illness itself, she was unwavering in her insistence that “no, no, you—” (being I, her ward of near ten years) “must rest now. I shall read to you once you’re of cool enough mind to appreciate what the writer has to tell you.”

On a normal day this would not have been a particular loss for me: it was only in my most dire boredom that I could ask her to read from her preferred volume on modern philosophy. I craved the words of authors, not writers; I cared immeasurably for the craft of any person who might channel imagination into creativity, whatever the medium. I made one, conditional, exception for history, and for accounts of foreign and exotic lands. What a world must exist outside my own! And I would love to see it someday.

Unable to keep her hawk eyes on me at all hours, Ms. Wills brought in an assistant for the occasion. I’m not quite certain, but would be happy to know, what she thought I might get up to in her absence. This fever pinned me to the bed, excepting when the coughing curled my spine –it was a constant game of tug-of-war between the two. With some wound to my pride, too weak to fight her on this matter, I relented to being watched by young Judith Wills, a kind but unremarkable girl, who might well end up a spinster like her aunt. Even in my dreadful state, I carried most of the conversation held those many evenings. I couldn’t say I was remiss to see her go.

My bed was set against the window –Dr. Reynolds had suggested sunlight might help me heal faster. I’m still not sure what he meant by that, as I never healed, but I did appreciate the meager view it gave me of the courtyard. Even a glimpse of the outside world –greyed as it was by the cold— was something made precious by its absence. I spent many a dawn and dusk watching the world turn outside my high bedroom.

Our home was situated on a grand field overlooking acres of uncultivated land, bordered to the east and north by a stream we, when I was much younger, childishly called “Babbler.” Soft, rolling hills –green and violet in the summer— would be a sickly brown beneath the snow. It, like I, would not make a substantial recovery until the weather turned again warm. (The grass, though, fared better in the rain than I.) The Babbler crosses onto our property just shy of our gate, and a little stone bridge passes over it in the road. I’d ridden my horse, Pegasus, over that bridge exactly five times. Each time I did not make it past the gate. Somewhere to the southeast, at a distance I couldn’t recall from where I sat at my window, the Babbler fed into the River Killian. If you followed the Killian, on its northern bank, you would soon reach Hithergreen, the nearest village to Crompton Manor, and beyond it Alston, the last town of any significance before Manchester. I’ve never been to Manchester, or Alston, and could count the number of times I’d ridden to Hithergreen on my fingers, but I have heard stories, and from these stories I’ve drawn the picture in my mind. It was with some juvenile pride that I knew, should I ever visit these places, I would be only disappointed, as they could not live up to my image of them.

Just beyond a row of fir trees were the servants’ quarters, little shacks as plain as they were small. Every morning, and afternoon, they’d emerge from the shacks and walk the half mile to the house. Every morning, and afternoon if I wasn’t asleep, I’d watch them as they arrived. “Good morning, Mabel. Good morning, Eddy, your leg is healing nicely. Good morning Alice. Alice, remind me I’ve got news for you. Good morning, Shannon, how is your mother? Good morning, John, and Arthur, and Peter –all arriving together, I see. Good morning, Pat. Good morning, Henry…”

That one morning in mid-February, with bleary eyes, I noticed an unfamiliar figure trudging through the field of white. I squinted out the window. In an unadorned tawny dress and black coat, a thin scarf the only barrier between her hair and the falling snow, she moved so deliberately. I watched her longer than most, and had I known at the time what lovely creature was about to come into my life, I might’ve found the strength to hop up out of bed and meet her at the door. Such a lady deserved a gentleman.

Lily was, to anyone who didn’t know her, no lady. Lily had been hired on as a cleaner –one of many we kept on staff. But she stood out from the beginning. Her demure enthusiasm for her work, and the efficiency with which she performed her duties, quickly inspired admiration in even my scrupulous mother. But Lily was destined for so much more than to sweep dirt from the floor and dust ancient portraits. Lily craved music as fiercely as I. But, being already at sixteen a remarkably clever girl, it was only once she had gained the favor of my mother that she approached my father with her simple request. In the room below mine, she addressed the Gibb patriarch thusly: “Milord, that little piano in your study is a grand one indeed. But I worry for all the dust settling on its keys. If no one else plays, might it be too much to ask that, for just a few minutes after all the chores are done to your satisfaction, I play a bit, just to keep it in tune?”

It was, in his estimation, too much to ask for. Father outright refused. But Mother’s favor came with as high an honor as it took to earn, and out of sight and earshot of everyone but myself, scolded his stubbornness and reminded him that Lily was right, that the instrument would surely be out of practice and soon out of commission if someone didn’t keep her in shape.

In silent exaltation, I prayed that Father agree with Mother’s fair points.

“Absolutely not,” he said. But Mother was not discouraged.

“What is the purpose of a piano if not to play it?”

“I will not have a maid-servant fiddling with my keys.”

Mother left him in a huff, and I sank deeper into my mattress. My limbs felt heavier than before, dashed hopes sitting on elbows and knees like lead. Disappointment held a vice grip on my chest. I lay there, panting softly, through the rest of the afternoon.

“Master Robin?”

Exhaustion overcame me.


	2. The Boy in the Bed

I awoke first to Dr. Reynolds poking and prodding at my chest. If I could feel my arms or legs I would have liked to shove him away, but for the moment they were all lagging behind my mind by some margin. I gave a quiet whimper to let him know of my displeasure, but he found it easy to ignore my plight. He knew I liked him no more than his physical exams, my disdain for each feeding the other.

Dr. Reynolds did not ever speak to me directly. He might report back to Ms. Wills in private or, much more often, my parents. He would tell them what they wanted to hear, as they were the ones who paid him, and Ms. Wills was a longtime friend of his. I was only the patient. Tonight was no different than any other in this regard, but when my arm awoke again, I made a wide swing at the hand that attempted to remove my blanket. I didn’t strike him. I wasn’t meaning to strike him, at least –only to protect my feverish body from the chill of the room. Heat rises in the house, but only to the first floor.

“Master Gibb?”

“Have you no compassion for an invalid?”

“I might have more compassion if you could be a more amiable patient.”

“I’ve neither need nor intention to be amiable in the absence of compassion.”

“Then we are at an impasse.”

I glared up at him, hoping my eyes might pierce his frozen heart, but to no such avail. He merely finished the exam, without my blessing, packed up his kit and trod off. Only God and Ms. Wills, in her chair in the corner, heard what I said as he shut the door.

Ms. Wills sighed and set aside her knitting. “A few months cooped up in your room and you forget all your manners.” I picked at a thread on my duvet. She came to sit next to me, and took my occupied hand in her own. Her fingers had always been strong in spite of her age, but capable of being as tender as they were severe. “If you shall start to behave yourself, then when your fever breaks, we will go for a stroll about the grounds.”

A shiver of anticipation danced up my spine, and I bit back a smile. How lovely it would be to get outside again. “That would be certainly agreeable.”

“You will promise me you will behave for Dr. Reynolds.”

“I do swear it.”

She pushed back my hair from my sweat-soaked forehead. “And you will rest now so you might hurry the waiting along. Sleep and the days will not only go faster, and you better equip your body to fight the illness, but you will have fewer opportunities to break your promise.”

I smiled and let my eyes fall shut once more.

I awoke second to no company, in the blackness of night, and found I could not sleep again. My thoughts turned to the novels going unread in my library, lonely without their solitary reader. I missed them as I missed the piano, or the summer. I missed them in a way no one in the household could understand; Mother found them frivolous, Father thought them childish and effeminate, Ms. Wills much preferred philosophy, and many of the servants either could not read, did not have the time, or did not care for it. Barry, even when he was home, was far too occupied with his studies to indulge in fiction. I could sometimes rely on Maurice for camaraderie in reading, but even he would take the company of people over pages. When he came home, he would spend many a night out in the town. Once he had gotten a taste of the world outside the manor, his hunger for it was never again satisfied. I hoped meekly that he was having fun in Geneva.

I turned my head just enough to see the black sky. Maurice said it was more of a deep dark blue, the same color as miles under the sea. I told him it did not matter whether it is blue or black, as you still can’t see a thing. Under the blue-or-black sky, Crompton Manor is asleep, but the stars above keep a watchful eye. I wonder, for the most fleeting of wondering moments, if they pay me any more mind than the household. I wonder what I am in the eyes of the cosmos.

With that thought, I again sleep, and this time I do not wake ‘til morning.


	3. Letters To, and From, Home

_Dearest Mother,_

_You may be pleased to know we have arrived safely at Geneva, and shall soon move up the mountain to Bartholomew’s rented cabin. We must postpone our ascent a day, as Barry has forgotten his kit on the train, and we must hope that either someone has turned it in, or shop for new skis and such. I will not bore you with all that is required for a ski trip, but know that your eldest disembarked with nothing but the coat on his back! We hope we will recover his neglected pack, but do not go so far as to hope we will not be spending the evening in the shops of Geneva. Fortunately skis are not difficult to come by here, and the city is beautiful this time of year, if might cold._

_Snow in Switzerland is so much different than it is back home –fresher, brighter, carries a happier aura than the sloshy mess we have in England. It’s a welcome and, I think you’ll agree, well-deserved respite from school after such a demanding term (and as soon as I hear of my marks, I will update you on how I fared with exams!)_

_Barry and Tom are both a tad overwhelmed by the size of the mountain, behemoth that it is, but Barth and I are excited enough for the four of us. Never mind that I’ve never skied before. Do not doubt that your boys will be quick to pick up on the finer points of the sport._

_We will spend two months in Barth’s cabin, and then move on to South of France some time in February._

_Say hello to Robin and Father for me, and have a happy Christmas!_

_Your dearest son,_

_Maurice_

_Dear Barry and Maurice,_

_I wish you have had as happy a Christmas as you may so far from home. I have much I would like to say about your trip and your absence, but I will hold my tongue for the time being and allow you to enjoy yourselves._

_I hope Barry has found his pack so that you need not buy another. Please remember to be modest and not flaunt your money; be frugal and deliberate with what you spend. As well, remember to be temperate and not give into temptations so abundant on holidays abroad. Wherever you travel you are representing the Gibb family name, and what you do reflects on your father and I, and all the family that has come before us. Your great great great grandfather toiled for his fortune, and to spend even a small portion of his money on frivolities and vices would be to spit on that work._

_I have said my peace. Your father and I are well, and have had a happy Christmas indeed. Robin is very ill and will spend much longer in bed than we originally believed. He’s been running a fever since the start of December, sleeps more often than he wakes, and his lungs and heart suffer worse for the poor weather. He is under the care of Dr. Reynolds and the dutiful watch of Ms. Wills, but we fear he will not survive the winter._

_Stay well. Wear your furs._

_Sincerely,_

_Your mother._


End file.
